Jackson saw it happen and smiled. “There you are.”
It was such a small sentence. It landed with unreasonable force.
When he dropped her off, he walked her to the door and kissed her cheek—not possessively, not performatively, just enough to be warm.
Damen was visible through the front window, standing in the dark living room with his arms crossed.
Carissa went to bed that night understanding two things she had not allowed herself to understand before.
First: her marriage had not merely become unhappy. It had become contemptuous.
Second: she had forgotten what it felt like to sit across from a man and not feel managed.
The dinners continued.
Once a week at first, then twice.
Sometimes they were actually dinners. Sometimes coffee. Sometimes a late walk along the lake after work with both of them in coats against the wind, talking about nothing dramatic—books, parents, the absurdity of school fundraisers, the way Chicago made every season feel like a test of character. Jackson never pushed for confession. He asked, and when she answered, he made space around the answer instead of crowding it.
At home, Damen came apart in predictable stages.
First he mocked it.